Donald Denney and his father - also named Donald Denney - concocted a plan on the telephone for dad to smuggle the son a ball of black-tar heroin into his Colorado prison (for eventual resale) during visiting hours, to be passed through the mouth by a deep kiss from a female visitor.

Steven Black, one of five suspects in a federal credit card and check-cashing fraud ring, was arrested in Maryland Heights, Mo., following a car chase. In a search, police discovered that Black was carrying $1,540 in cash, in a roll tied with a shoelace to his privates.

New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino, waging a particularly contentious battle, mailed out a flier in the past election, suggesting that Democratic state politicians are corrupt, with photos of seven of that party's current and recent office-holders and accompanied by a special odor-triggering paper that releases a "garbage-scented" smell when exposed to air - and which supposedly grows even more foul over time.

Jennifer Tesch's daughter, Kennedy, was kicked off her cheerleader squad - supporting a youth flag-football team - in Madison Heights, Mich., after complaining to her mother about the saucy language of one of the cheers in the girls' repertoire: "Our backs ache!/Our skirts are too tight!/We shake our booties!/From left to right!"

Marie Murphy, a fifth-grade teacher in Stratford, N.J., and her husband lost almost everything in a house fire in April, but when she arrived at the burning home, she defied firefighters and dashed inside to retrieve a single prized possession: her Philadelphia Phillies season tickets.

In a heartwarming climax to an adopted son's emotional search for his birth mother (who gave him up for adoption 33 years ago), Richard Lorenc of Kansas managed to track down mom, Vivian Wheeler, 62, living in Bakersfield, Calif., where she is retired - as a circus-sideshow "bearded lady" (the result of hypertrichosis, also known as "werewolf syndrome").

Notorious killer, Jon Venables, convicted in 1993 at age 11 of the torture-murder of a 2-year-old Merseyside boy, was held until age 18 and then released on conditions and with a new identity to protect him from harassment.

After two Mexican fishermen were dragged from their boats and "chewed so badly that their bodies could not be identified by their own families," according to a Daily Express review of a British TV documentary, warnings were issued along the Pacific coast about the northern migration of Humboldt squid.

In September, the Treviso, Italy, adult doll maker Diego Bortolin - who specializes in lifelike, precisely detailed, fully flexible, anatomically correct models of humans - told reporters that he had completed a special order for a 50-year-old businessman whom he would not name but who paid Bortolin the equivalent of $18,000 (compared to his normal price of about $5,000) to go beyond his generic "young woman" to create a replica of the very girlfriend who had just recently dumped him.

U.S. and NATO forces in southern Afghanistan have reported feelings of revulsion at the number and ostentatiousness of local Pashtun men who publicly flaunt the 9- to 15-year-old boys that they've acquired as lovers.

Spousal violence continues to plague India, especially in lower-income areas of Uttar Pradesh state, but four years ago, Ms. Sampat Pal Devi, then 36, formed a vigilante group of females to fight back and has made notable progress, according to a report on Slate.com.